As of this writing, the sweeping Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is making its way to the desk of President Barack Obama, who is presumably eager to sign it into law. The enactment of the bill, named after its two chief democratic architects, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), caps off a months-long struggle to fulfill one of the President's chief campaign goals and reform the nation's financial system in the hopes of preventing another economic crisis.

"Wall Street rigged the game. Big bankers gambled away our money. When they lost their risky bets, they came crying to the taxpayers for help," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid after final Senate approval of the bill. "And two years later, that's still how the system works today. Without this reform, we would be inviting it to happen all over again.That's not a gamble I was willing to take, and neither was a supermajority of Senators."

Whether or not the bill and all of its more than 2,300 will succeed in its quest to prevent the next bubble burst will only be seen years down the road. In the meantime, several changes will go into effect that could wind up having an impact on commercial creditors and their companies. Here are a few highlights:

Since the hearing you held in the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts in March, entitled "Could Bankruptcy Reform Help Save Small Business Jobs," NACM has found it necessary to reiterate its support for the principles listed in our prior letter, while adding more details as to how we believe they can be realized.

The following are some specific alterations we would make to the Bankruptcy Code, each one geared toward increasing expediency, efficiency and fundamental fairness in the small business bankruptcy process.

Today, on the final day of its October 2009 Term, the U.S. Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, amended the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) while leaving this legislation primarily intact. Based on a 5-4 decision, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will now be able to remove a member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which was created by SOX to oversee and investigate accounting firms that audit public companies, at will rather than for cause. According to Chief Justice Roberts, PCAOB’s original structure violated the Constitutional separation of powers principle. “The president cannot take care that the laws be faithfully executed if he cannot oversee the faithfulness of the officers who execute them,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

SOX and its PCAOB are not yet out of the woods though. The pending financial reform package in Congress includes a measure to exempt small businesses from the scope of SOX’s Section 404 (internal control mandates). Stay tuned to NACM’s Credit Real-Time blog, eNews and other publications for the latest developments concerning SOX and the PCAOB.

While the Supreme Court could rule on the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) before the end of this month, the debate over the Act's merits has continued unabated.

According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which is serving as co-counsel in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), SOX has had such negative effects as permanently reducing the number of companies going public and negatively affecting job creation and economic growth."The sheer size of companies going public has increased, in large part because a company needs to be pretty big to afford the accounting costs that have shot up fourfold as a result of SOX, according to a summary of research in the Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal," said the CEI in a recent memo.

Citing Congressional requests and pending legislative changes, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) again delayed the enforcement date for their "Red Flags" Rules. Originally, enforcement was to begin next week, on June 1, 2010, but has been delayed through December 31, 2010.

In its release on the subject, Commission Chief Jon Leibowitz urged Congress to act quickly in passing legislation that limits the scope of the Rules, which are designed to require "creditors" and "financial institutions" to address the risk of identity theft. "Congress needs to fix the unintended consequences of the legislation establishing the 'Red Flags' Rules -- and to fix this problem quickly. We appreciate the efforts of Congressmen Barney Frank and John Adler for getting a clarifying measure passed in the House, and hope action in the Senate will be swift," said Leibowitz. "As an agency we're charged with enforcing the law, and endless extensions delay enforcement."

On Thursday (May 20) evening, the Senate passed 59-39 down largely partisan lines its version of sweeping financial reform, The Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 (S 3217), which focuses on everything from swipe fees to derivatives trading regulation. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA), who helped spearhead a similar version out of the House months ago, say they should be able to craft final legislation from the two versions of reform within a month. Both expect the president to sign the reform legislation into law by July.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would eliminate unnecessary paperwork requirements under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA).

House Bill 3506, the Eliminate Privacy Notice Confusion Act, would, as its title indicates, waive the requirement to file an annual privacy notice for companies that are either prohibited from sharing customer information due to other federal laws or don't change their privacy notice year to year. The legislation is expected to help companies who purchase debt and collect it who will no longer have to send privacy notices, as the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) prevents them from sharing information with third parties.

As Congress continues to consider measures to spur job growth, a recent hearing in the House Committee on Small Business suggested that procurement reform may be necessary to ensure that the Federal Government is doing all it can to get smaller firms hiring again.

Entrepreneurs who testified at the hearing noted that despite major increases in federal spending over the last decade, many small companies still struggle to win their fair share of federal contracts. Committee Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) noted that this is especially troubling since the overwhelming majority of jobs created are created in the small business sector.

A Republican objection during the health care debate left one prominent Democratic Senator fuming after it resulted in the postponement of a hearing on the 2011 budget for the Small Business Administration (SBA).

Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, sharply criticized her Republican colleagues after they cited an obscure Senate procedural rule to cancel or delay a set of afternoon hearings. According to the rule, no hearings can be held in the Senate after 2:00pm without the unanimous consent of all Senators. While this consent is routinely granted on a daily basis, Senate Republicans recently refused in order to show their displeasure with the health care debate and the Democrats' use of the reconciliation process to enact a bill.

The Vermont State Senate Judiciary Committee recently approved a bill that would restrict interchange fees levied on merchants by credit card companies each time a card is used for payment. Should the legislation be signed into law, the state would become the first to regulate these charges.

The bill, S. 138, plainly titled "An Act Relating to Credit Card Fees," passed the Judiciary Committee with an amendment proposed by State Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin (D) that would prohibit credit card companies from fining merchants for offering discounts to customers who use a credit card that costs less for the merchant to accept. The legislation would also allow merchants to set minimum or maximum transaction amounts without being fined or penalized by credit card companies and prohibit credit card companies from mandating the acceptance of all of their cards if the merchant chooses to accept only one of them.